195 Broadway - Planning and Construction

Planning and Construction

From 1885 to 1910, AT&T was headquartered at 125 Milk Street in Boston.

The building at 195 Broadway was constructed under the leadership of AT&T's president Theodore Newton Vail, who had taken the AT&T helm in 1907 and added the same title at Western Union in 1909 when that firm was purchased by AT&T. In 1912, Vail developed a two-phase plan for a 29-story headquarters building that would be constructed on Broadway on the block stretching from Dey Street to Fulton Street. The plan entailed constructing one wing on the Dey Street corner, followed by the second wing on the Fulton Street corner.

The first portion of the building, the Dey Street wing completed in 1916, was an L-shaped structure at the corner of Dey Street and Broadway with an extension reaching Fulton Street.

William W. Bosworth, the architect who designed the John D. Rockefeller estate at Kykuit, was commissioned to create the Fulton Street wing of the building. Bosworth's designed featured layers of gray granite columns in Doric and Ionic styles, and a lobby that included 43 oversized Doric columns made of marble.